Landscapes of Illusions and Possibilities | Maps, Materials and The Lens
Sept 7th to Sept 22th, 2024
Opening Reception Saturday, Sept 7th 5-9pm
Artist Talk and Closing Sunday, Sept 22nd 12-3pm
Participating Artists:
Alicia Piller
Beth Davila Waldman
Naomi White
Keystone Art Space Gallery presents “Illusions and Possibilities | Maps, Materials, and the Lens,” a three artist exhibit featuring Alicia Piller, Beth Davila Waldman and Naomi White.
Curatorial Statement:
Landscapes according to W.J.T. Mitchell, “are not a noun but a verb, employed as a technique of colonial representation. They are not a genre of photography or painting, they are a medium of imperialism.”
Responding to the precarity of our current political and ecological crisis, Landscapes of Illusions and Possibilities imagines buried and future realities. Exploring the way landscape is sold to us within the aesthetics of photography as truth, these three multimedia artists contend with the influence of colonization on our current global mindset as a way of feeling through the multiplicity of challenges we face today. Interweaving found, discarded, and formed material with images, archival photographs, and disruptive interventions, Landscapes of Illusions and Possibilities offer acts of refusal, resiliency, and hope.
“The very act of trying to look ahead to discern possibilities and offer warnings is an act of hope.”
Octavia E. Butler
Pulling from various sources such as Octavia Butler’s Parable series, essays from the Terraforming Exhibition Catalog by Corey Kelly, W.J.T. Mitchell’s Landscape and Power, and Kate Crawford’s Atlas of AI: Power Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence, the presented work will confront climate disaster, social issues of injustice, and the physical and psychological shifts we are experiencing of the planet considering the Anthropocene as a way to share the burden of such pain but also as a way to highlight the natural cycles of change and how it offers hope.
When Octavia Butler wrote Parable of the Sower in 1993, she placed it in our present, beginning July 20th, 2024. As circumstances have presented in our present day reality, the very next day, July 21st, 2024, our country experienced a powerful opportunity for change with the stepping down of President Joe Biden, enlivening the country with hope and needed excitement by supporting presidential candidate Kamala Harris. As Butler predicted, the country is divided, and we will need to act in order to survive.
Rebuilding and reframing problematic narratives and reconstructing a new basis from which to see and grow, is at the roots of all three artists’ practices. Their approach echoes an acknowledgment of what we are contending with in this moment, and the importance, power, and possibilities of transformation.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Alicia Piller
Los Angeles based mixed media artist, Alicia Piller was born and raised in Chicago and received her Bachelors in both Fine Arts (Painting) & Anthropology from Rutgers University in 2004. While working in the fashion industry; living a decade in NYC and three and a half years In Santa Fe, NM, Piller cultivated her distinctive sculptural voice. Continuing to expand her artistic practice, Alicia completed her MFA focused on sculpture and installation from Calarts in May of 2019.
As a method to locate the root of human histories, Alicia merges the new and discarded, experimenting with of a wide range of materials to construct large scale works that mimic forms of cellular biology. Piller envisions historical traumas, both political and environmental, through the lens of a microscope. Piller’s mixed media practice is as much about materiality as it is about content. Attempting to reconcile questions about the current state of our times; she works on a macro/micro level, breathing life into materials that have been removed from their ‘natural’ environment. Manipulating things like resin and latex balloons (stemming from her background as a clown); each work becomes a biological unfolding of time, examining the energy around wounds societies have inflicted upon themselves and others. Alicia’s work is a part of the Hammer Permanent Collection, Glendale College Collection, the Pam Royalle Collection, & Janine Barrois Collection; she has been featured in the LA Times ‘Water keeps us alive’ (2022), & The New York Times ‘5 Artist to Watch at the California Biennial’ (2022).
Beth Davila Waldman Born in Princeton, New Jersey in 1975, Beth Davila Waldman pursued her career in the arts initially at Wellesley College (1997) where she earned a BA with a double degree in art history and studio art, graduating with honors in studio arts with a focus on sculpture. She continued her commitment to exploring site and material as her conceptual focus at the San Francisco Art Institute (2005) with a BFA in sculpture where she was awarded the 2004 Harold E. Weiner Memorial Sculpture Award. Since, Waldman has been awarded residencies by 18th Street Art Center, Kala Art Institute, Playa Institute, and Edition/Basel. In 2019, she was invited to be the introductory Annual PhotoAlliance speaker in conjunction with David Maisel at San Francisco Art Institute's Osher Lecture Hall. Today, Waldman proudly serves on the PhotoAlliance board.
Over the past three years she expanded her studio practice with additional studios in Los Angeles and New York’s Hudson Valley. Waldman’s work has been featured in art fairs in Hong Kong (2019), Mexico City (2023), San Francisco’s ArtMarket (2023) with Kim Eagles Smith Gallery and Berlin (2024) with BLAM presented by IdolWild and Monte Vista Projects Los Angeles. Her work has been featured in the De Young Museum’s OPEN Exhibition in 2020 & 2023 in addition to Museum of Northern California in 2024. Waldman’s studio is currently at the ICB Building in Sausalito, CA.
Naomi White
Naomi White is an abolitionist feminist, artist, and educator, working on ideas at the intersection of political ecology and photography. Throughout her work White addresses an array of contemporary issues, asking how we can shift our focus away from the current capitalist model of exploitation, to one of equity and collective voice, for all people, animals and the planet.
White is the recent winner of The 2024 Associate's Award at Brand52 and was a finalist for the 2023 Hopper Prize. She has exhibited throughout North America and Europe, including art fairs Scope Miami, Spectrum Miami, Photo LA and Kolajfest. Her work has been published in Cut Me Up, FAYN, PDN, The Brooklyn Rail, and Uncertain States. White has given artist talks at Kolajfest at the New Orleans Museum of Art, at the Center for Ethics at Cal Poly Pomona, Santa Monica City College, and UCLA Extension. White holds an MFA in Photography and Related Media from SVA in New York, a Post Baccalaureate in Photography from the San Francisco Art institute, and a BA in English Literature from San Francisco State.
White is the current faculty chair of the photography department at NYFA in Burbank. Teaching is an essential part of her artistic practice. She teaches classes exploring theoretical and historical concerns in photography, graduate seminars, Desire and Disgust, Photography and Activism, FAYN magazine, The City as Portrait, and Dreaming in Collage. White co-curates thesis shows with her students each semester at various galleries in Los Angeles and curates exhibitions on campus with student and faculty work.